Gator,

When you're new to riding, knowing what gear you are in seems important to you. As you gain riding experience, knowing what gear you are in is automatic (without consciously counting) but it also becomes less important as you change now not by looking at the speedo or rev counter, but by how the bike sounds and feels to you at the perceived speed you are doing for the road conditions. You "just know" like you "just know" in your car.

E.g. 4th gear at roughly 4,000rpm is 60kph (roughly 37mph). This also happens to be the suburban speed limit (we do have 50 and 40 zones but I'm old school where it was 60 and we'll stick with this for the sake of the example).

6th gear at 100kph (about 63mph) is roughly 5,000rpm. - 110 is roughly 5,500. And going the other way we get to what you have discovered.... 90kph is about 4,500 and 80kph (50mph) is about 4,000rpm.

Even though some people say the bike is happy doing 4000rpm in 6th, it really is the absolute bottom of that gear and you have no real pulling power down that low. For mine, the bottom of 6th gear is 4,500rpm which is 90 kph (about 56mph). If you need a burst of power you are still better of being in a lower gear, but this can get you by.

By experience, you will soon learn, some hills you approach in 6th gear doing 5000 will be better taken by dropping down to 5th while maintaining your 100kph (63mph). And by dropping down NOT AFTER you start to lose steam but BEFORE you hit the bottom of the hill. This way you maintain your momentum. But this will all come to you with time in the saddle.

4th gear is an interesting gear. I can use it to putt putt around town doing my 60kph at 4,000. But, when I need to merge onto a highway from the suburban road, by leaving it in fourth I can take the rpm all the way to 9,000 and my speed will now be 140kph (88mph). Once on the highway, kick to fifth briefly, then kick to 6th as I bring my speed back down to correct highway speed.

To see how the gears are selected on this bike when passing / overtaking, watch this video...

Agree totaly 

I am still relatively new to bikes and my GS, but if they are like cars in this respect and I couldn't see why they wouldn't be, then what you are doing is called slaving the engine. Think about pedaling a pushbike with gears and being in one that is too low for your speed. That's what you are doing to your engine IMO.

My bike spends the vast majority of its life between 5000 and 7000 revs. That's 60 mph indicated, about 55 in reality, to around 80 indicated, 72 or so in reality. If I go through a town and have to slow to 50, I grab 5th. If I have to slow to 40, I grab 4th.

If the advice I have been given is correct, spending too long with your revs too high will wear out your top end (your valves and such). Spending too long with your revs too low will wear out your bottom end (bearings and crankshaft).

Nice vid Mister with some good riding although I wouldn't expect a new rider with only 300 miles under his belt (OP) to be duplicating it for a while.  It's also a good example of the best answer to the thread subject of knowing what gear you are in and another reason I like the GS500 standard gearing.  On our mph speedos the needles read the same in 5th gear with standard gearing, 40 mph is 4k rpm, 50 mph is 5k rpm, etc.  Your km/h speedos show different numbers but the needle positions are the same so one can see at a glance which gear you are in during your spirited run.  Anytime the tach needle is behind the speedo needle you are in 6th gear and if they are parallel you're in 5th.  Doubt there are many GS500 riders that haven't found themselves running down the highway in 5th when they thought they were in 6th.